Germany under new Chancellor Friedrich Merz surprised NATO allies on Thursday by signalling plans to massively boost defence spending to five percent of GDP as demanded by US President Donald Trump.

The pledge, made by the foreign minister at NATO talks in Turkey, came a day after conservative Merz, in office for just over a week, said his government planned to build up "the strongest conventional army in Europe".

Security expert Roderich Kiesewetter of Merz's conservative CDU party called the move a "paradigm shift", speaking to Bild daily, adding that "it won't happen overnight, but it has to happen".

For now those goals sound highly ambitious, given the dire state of the German armed forces which, defence experts warn, have been plagued by shortages of key weapons systems and faced trouble recruiting new troops.

Germany, with its dark World War II history, has long been reluctant to spend big on defence. Funding dropped off sharply after the Cold War as European countries relied on NATO heavyweight the United States for security.

Decades of lower military spending since the Berlin Wall fell, the........

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